C1TopicBar provides several built-in styles such as Custom, System, Office2010Blue, Office2010Black, Office2010Silver,  Office2007Blue, Office2007Black, Office2007Silver, Office2003Blue, Office2003Olive, Office2003Silver, OfficeXP, Classic, and WindowsXP that can be easily applied using the VisualStyle property. Note that the VisualStyle property and VisualStyle enumeration supersede the LookAndFeel property and LookAndFeelEnum enumeration, which are now obsolete.

You could also apply a special style to the topic pages to darken the back color of the page header. To apply the special style to the topic page use SpecialStyle property. You could also customize the C1TopicBar's style using C1TopicBar's general appearance properties such as the BackColor, BackgroundImage, BackgroundImageLayout, and ForeColor.